Scott Poore is an animal lover. He moves into an animal shelter’s kennel (犬舍) with the ______ of helping unwanted young dogs get adopted (收养). Queen, a 3-year-old dog, has just got the most ______ roommate despite the narrow living room.

Since Poore is a (n) ______ visitor at the animal shelter, he is familiar with all of the ______. However, little Queen has ______ his attention in particular. Poore says that he recently began to notice that Queen seemed to be “losing ______” in finding a forever home. “I have been visiting the shelter every single day for over a year and I can ______ see Queen’s giving up. She used to get so ______ when I would arrive, but now she just lies in her bed.”

So to raise awareness of Queen’s situation, Poore packed a suitcase and moved into the kennel to keep it ______. Poore says it has been ______ managing his work while also living at the shelter, but he is ______ to stay in the kennel until someone adopts Queen. After he ______ the kennel earlier this week, he and his new puppy roommate have been ______ the headlines of a lot of national news, but no possible ______ have stepped forward.

Delightfully, this dog has eventually been given a loving home after his path ______ with that of a woman living on the other side of the country.

In 200 Years Cows May Be the Biggest Land Mammals (哺乳动物) on the Planet

Around 13,000 years ago North America had a wider variety of mammals than modern Africa. There were multiple horse species, camels and some now-extinct animals. And such _________ creatures were not just found in North America. On every continent mammals on average were a lot larger from around 2.5 million until about 11,700 years ago.

Scientists have long debated what caused all these large creatures to go extinct while many of the smaller ones _________. A team of researchers led by biologist Felisa Smith analyzed evidence from millions of years’ worth of mammalian extinctions and found that on each continent large mammals started to _________ around the same time humans first showed up.

If the extinction trend continues, many more large mammals will soon disappear as well, as the primary threats from humans have _________ from overhunting to indirect processes such as habitat loss. The largest land mammal 200 years from now could well be the domestic cow, Smith’s research suggests. In their new study Smith and her team analyzed a database of all land mammals that lived from 65 million years ago until today. “We found _________ no effect of climate on mammalian extinction over 65 million years,” she says. But starting around 125,000 years ago and continuing until today, large mammals have been more likely to go extinct than smaller ones, the researchers found.

The average _________ of surviving mammals has decreased as a result. And those large-mammal extinctions are tightly coupled with the _________ of humans. For most of mammalian _________ history, an animal’s size was not predictive of its extinction risk. That _________ only appeared once humans began to live alongside large mammals.

This finding does not mean climate-related changes could not have __________ some wildlife populations, enabling humans to more easily bring about their eventual downfall. __________, it suggests the greater likelihood of large mammals going extinct is tied to human activities. The animals that evolved without the risk of hunting from humans were suddenly faced with a new __________. They simply could not __________ fast enough to survive the invasion of humans.

Smith says the lesson to be learned from the new findings is that our ancestors prepared us to be extremely skillful killers. “What’s __________ now,” she says, “is that some of us are comfortable enough, have a high enough standard of living, that we can start thinking about our use of the Earth.” Rather than simply behaving as __________, many of us are now in a position to become environmental protectors.

My daughter has been crazy about raising a pet for a long time.

Last spring I bought two newly-hatched (新孵出的) chickens for her: She got________ and took good care of them. ________ a few days later, both chickens died. She burst into tears from________. I helped her________ the two chickens under a tree behind our house. I thought it would be the________ of her ideas.

________, I was wrong. Children are children________. The failure hasn’t________ my daughter in any way. She tried to keep a small animal or even a snail.

One day last winter, I noticed under the eaves (屋檐) of the house a family of sparrows. My daughter and I could________ the sparrows as our “pets”, but we didn’t.

So I told her to________ the grains on the windows. A few minutes later, the sparrows came to land on the windowsill (窗台) ________ and ate the rice. Suddenly my daughter asked me, “Mum, can we catch and cage the sparrows, and let them________ with us in the room? How________ it is for them to live outside.”

“Oh, my dear, I do not think it’s a good idea. You know,” I explained to her, “the sparrow is a bird who loves ________ . No one can keep them in a cage. If they are caught, they will ________quickly. They are________ to living outside. In addition, they have warm nest under the eaves.”

From then on, we have set up a kind of________ with the sparrow family. We feed them frequently and________ them as pet birds. However, we do not need to ________them. We________seeing these little birds flying and jumping among branches, leaves and flowers in the spring mornings.